Don Quixote eps 4-11

There's this part at the end of Don Quixote that really pissed me off.

Yakuza about 50 meters away from Shirota and Sabashima and kids in the middle.

Little girl is left alone.

Sabashima to the rescue. Probably never occured to him or Shirota to move away so the kids won't be in the line of fire.

Sabashima crouches down, holding the kid, 25 meters away from yakuza with gun while Shirota is 50 meters away from yakuza. Note where gun is pointing.

Somehow Sabashima gets shot in the waist. I don't know about you but the yakuza would have to be pretty much pointing the gun at Shirota's feet to hit Sabashima. If the yakuza were a crap shot, recoil would have made his shot go higher, not lower. Who's the bloody dickhead who thought this would make sense?! Just because this is a comedy with yakuza playing a stupid card game to decide their leader doesn't give the director license to ignore the rules of physics.

Is this the same director who did the action scene at the end of Shiroi Haru that nearly killed the dorama? There are many ways to make this work better. Eg, kids run to the side and one stupid kid runs towards Sabashima and Shirota. Or kids were passing by our heroes and one falls down right in front. The set up that works best is Sabashima taking the bullet for Shirota.

Don Quixote which is pretty good for the first half tapers of (like most jdoramas) when they run out of new and different stuff of Sabashima to do. Actually, the main problem was they didn't give Shirota anything cool to do. Usually for body swap stories, both characters were used the respective skills and do things different. Shirota may be a chicken-shit but the writers never let him use his brains and tech savvy to solve yakuza problems.

If Sabashima can help kids by shouting and rushing headlong into problems, surely Shirota can solve problems not by violence but by cunning. The only character growth Shirota had was to learn to be a bit like Sabashima instead of realising and utilising his skills. Its still watchable but I'm disappointed that Don Quixote never fulfilled its potential. Its as if instead of looking at all the cliches of body swapping stories and thinking about how to make this the body swapping dorama to end all body swapping doramas, the makers decided to play safe and go for crowd pleasing mediocrity.

Mano Erina Concert Tour 2011 ~Hatachi no Otome 801 DAYS~

The dvd of the concert I went to 4 months ago is out! Well, not exactly the concert I went to since I went to the Osaka one and the dvd performance is from her Shibuya show. Its basically the same thing anyway so yeah, its another way for me to relive one of the highlights of my Japan trip and finally see what those old ojisan fans were seeing with their binoculars.

My favourite part of the concert besides her playing all her piano songs and Genki mono de ikou! was her performance of Daredemo Iwanai de. The lyrics combined with her dance was the ultimate combination of innocent and sexy. The sight of her doing all the gestures with the microphone stand got me all excited.

When I came back from my trip I tried to find any performances of her Daredemo Iwanai de but couldn't as it wasn't a single. IMHO, it should have been but now I get to watch it everyday. :) As mentioned in my post about the concert, the only negative thing was Sekai wa summer party was sung as part of a medley.

Also included in the dvd are the end rolls. At the end of the concert was a montage from of Mano Erina rehearsing for the particular show spliced with scenes of the fans lining up and getting into the venue. This was also shown at the end of the concert I went to which was a nice touch. The knowledge that I am somewhere in the crowd of a bonus clip of a Mano Erina dvd warms my heart.

I am somewhere on the bottom right on the screen.

Now I have an excuse to put on my Mano Erina t-shirt and wrist bands. :)

Yuusha Yoshihiko to Maou no Shiro eps 5-12

Fun. Lots of fun. That's probably the most apt word to describe this series. You can see on their faces as sometimes they don't bother keeping a straight face. Yuusha Yoshihiko is a collection of Dragon Quest inspired skits held together by your typical quest to destroy great evil storyline.

It sort of got less funny after the halfway point, specifically ep 7. Way too many running jokes that have lost their flavour and comedy that has absolute no connection with the fantasy setting. They recovered in ep 8 with a funny episode on changing character classes but I wasn't laughing as hard as in the first half of the series.

Danjo-san, don't sacrifice your sideburns!

It probably had to do with all the fights turning out to be gang fighting some inept villain all the time and there were not any cool fights to break up the monotony. I think the two episodes I found not so funny were episodes 7 and 9 where Yuusha and gang had to fight a succession of bad guys to reach the boss.

 Oguri Shun's costume is awesome.

Some of it had to do with me not understanding the jokes like the raccoon washing the gun or Jyaitan the shaman. The Oguri Shun cameo was funny as hell and you can just see it on their faces. There's basically two episodes over a total of 12 that weren't as funny as the first half of the series but on the whole Yuusha Yoshihiko has provided me with more laughs than any jdorama I can remember.

I've got to say, I really enjoyed the last two episodes. Yuusha and gang have got to go to Maou's castle to fight and since they have no budget and need to set the final battles in a strange place, they decided to set in the modern world which I think had a lot of hilarious results. I don't know why they never addressed how our heroes payed for everything though.

Some of my favourite bits of the series:

Ep 5 - Walking in a straight line and into people's homes to break pots and open drawers. One of the staples of Fantasy RPGs that people never question.

Ep 6 - Yoshihiko X Rien was so freaking funny. I need more Nakamura Shizuka but I can't remember how big a role she played in Mioka which I had dropped quickly. I just can't watch bad doramas just for eye candy.

The whole song sequence was just pure gold!
Ep 7 - Dying and going to a priest. Makes me feel like playing Shining Force.

Ep 8 - Yoshihiko becoming an idol. Actually every episode with Yoshihiko abandoning his quest is funny.

This has nothing to do with Yoshihiko becoming an idol but somehow I have taken too many screencaps of Nakamura Shizuka.


Ep 10 - Cloning skill. Nuff said.


Ep 11 - Yoshihiko and gang enjoying the trappings of modern life. The Murasaki confrontation was the highlight for me.

Murasaki's face after the 'sore wa sore, kore wa kore!' retort.

Ep 12 - They saved all their CG money for the final episode.

On the whole, Yuusha Yoshihiko has given me more laughs per minute than any other dorama I can think of. Its a homage to one of my favourite game genres and there's no reason why anyone would not enjoy this even if they don't play Japanese RPGs. I so hope they do the movie.

Soredemo Ikite Yuku eps 9-11

I finally caved in last night. I just could not bear the wait for ep 9 subs and then the long wait for the last two. This isn't KDO where you could watch it raw for the story and enjoy the dialogue again with the subs. The emotional impact when first watching is important and lack of comprehension would dilute the experience/enjoyment.

There was a risk but this wasn't Hagetaka the movie with all the technical terms. I gave it a go and suffice to say episode 9 and 10 were pretty awesome with ep 11 being a lot calmer. Nothing could match the emotional kettle peg of ep 8 but the quality of the acting and story doesn't stop.

I just love how Soredemo can tackle the frequently used subjects of revenge, responsibility and forgiveness in jdoramas and avoid all the pitfalls and conventions that make most jdoramas very preachy. It is testament to the writing and acting whereby the characters do not need to voice out their emotional turmoils and how they come to terms with things. They actually do but they say it in a way that it feels like they are telling the other person, not the audience.

Soredemo is so non judgmental. We get to see Kenji as this cold blooded, unfeeling murderer. We get to see him like a kid, scared to remember what he had done when confronting Aki's mom in ep 8. We find out about his traumatic childhood but its not offered as an excuse. He tries to absolve himself of responsibility by blaming it on Futaba. He blames his father and at the same time he wants his father to acknowledge him. Kenji is what he is. A murderer, son and a brother.

Soredemo is a godlike dorama. It is invincible. Not many jdoramas can touch it. It is destined to be on my top 10 list of jdoramas, whenever I get around to it. Fukuda Mayuko may have a limited role but I'm pretty sure she got to take a small part in this show.

If you know a bit of kanji, I find watching it with Japanese subs helped with my understanding and is a great way to learn kanji besides playing the AKB48 game on my psp. I copy and pasted the Japanese subs onto google translate but it transted the counter for the lines as well, ie the first line was numbered 1 and it became 'one'. I think rewatching Soredemo and older jdoramas with Japanese subs is a pretty good idea. I'm running out of superlatives for Soredemo.  This is truly IMHO, a jdorama classic and everyone must watch it instead of generic crap like Zenkai girl which has 3000 downloads per sub.



VAGUE SPOILERS FOR ENDING

As for the ending... I get it but I just didn't get why it had to be so sad which the last episode was based around. Its not like they couldn't be in touch and stuff. Unless of course Futaba thinks of it as a punishment for her. That she should be happy while Yuri's mom is still in the hospital.

It doesn't bother me that much cause this is a character based dorama and Futaba made that choice which I can respect. I really like the last bit where they are trading letters/lines and its just awesome scenery with rolling piano music. I just don't buy the 'we can't meet again' cause I'm going to be Yuri's mom' bit cause there's emails, skype, mobile phones and cars/trains to meet up on weekends unless there was an obvious 'we can't meet' cause I can't be happy thing that Hiroki understood. Need to wait for subs to see how it works.

Some other stuff that I loved:

- Hiroki becoming almost like an enlightened monk in ep 9, free from the shackles of hate and the past. Query where Futaba can ever be free or should she free herself? Is atonement for her brother necessary? Perhaps it is for her to find peace.

- The flying kick. I was laughing and having the feeling of WTF at the same time. After all the crying, it all the anger that is buried is unleased as she pushes the policeman aside like a rag doll. Lol. And the flashback at the beginning of episode 12 makes it even better.

- Yuri's mom didn't wake up. Forced happy endings have no place in dramatic stories.

- Alas, Kurashina Kana turned out to be merely a plot device and a sounding board for Hiroki to voice his thoughts. :(

How can I be so blind!

While looking up calenders to buy for next year, came across the calender for Kurashina Kana. Nothing much to look at but there was something about her name that bothered me.

So did a search and what do you know, she's Satsuki from Soredemo Ikite yuku! However, that can't possibly be why the name rung a bell for me. Looked up google images and there was something oddly familiar. Can it be?

Yes, she's the girl on this Choya advertisement which greeted me everytime I took a train in Japan. I would pay $40 for the above picture in my room. I am ashamed that I was unable to link the smiling face that I saw everyday in Japan to the Tokyo girl in Soredemo who's purpose in the dorama is still unclear. In penance, maybe I should get her calender, though the cover looks pretty bad. Kurashina Kana looks infinitely better with a smile rather than a blank stare.

Risou no Kekkon eps 1-4

90s doramas have something different that we can't find anymore. I'm not talking about the giant suits that salarymen wear or the fact that people in that era think someone using a laptop on a flight is showing off. There's this kind of innocence and simplicity in them. Koukou kyoushi wasn't an innocent dorama but I find I cannot be cynical about oldies. Its like the overacting is different, it doesn't grate me like the ones today.

Risou no Kekkon starst with Tsutomu (Takenouchi Yutaka) meeting Mari (Tokiwa Takako) on a plane and next thing you know, he randomly proposes to her and she says yes. At this point I'm thinking WTF and where is this dorama going. Gotta go along with the premise and see where the story goes.

Mari is this emotional 26 year old girl from Osaka and Tsutomu is this smart salaryman who is dumb in other matters. Girls speaking kansai-ben is sexy though harder to understand. Mari's age and background is important because it touches on ideas from the 90s such as an OL's job is to get married by a certain age and the importance of wives to salarymen's careers.

Nowadays instead of romantisicing about an OL from the country finding her prince, its about uni girl dying from rare disease playing married couple with boyfriend because girls like projecting themselves onto sick beautiful creatures. There's a sort of chemistry going on between Tsutomu as the emotionally detached guy who seems to be on Xanax all the time and Mari who does all the talking and crying.

Why have I not thought of using spoons before? Probably cause there were not any places with hot waitresses in short skirts where I grew up.

At the end of episode one, we find out that the reason the proposal was so fast in the first episode was that this is going to be about the family war, especially between the mothers. Normally this would cause me to stop watching but when the mothers are being played by Nakama Yukie's mom from Trick and the old lady from Akimahende! I'm happy to make an exception to my no more evil mother in law doramas rule.

If the stupid idiot had lowered his spoon more, we could have seen some colour.

Risou no Kekkon emits warm fuzzy feelings but at the same time it seems more like high school students falling in love for the first time dorama than adults. One thing this dorama has given me is a very good reason to go eat at Anna Miller's next time I go Japan. The way the uniform emphasizes certain parts of the body is genius and I'd rather be served by a regular sized waitress wearing an Anna Miller uniform than one huge Hooters girl anyday.

Back to the dorama, Risou no Kekkon is pretty much what one would expect from a 90s dorama about an innocent couple getting married and both families who are against it. It doesn't do anything bad and there are plenty of funny moments especially Andy in ep 4 but its not good enough to be called a must watch. For fans of oldies like me, its worth your time though. Do check it out because they don't make doramas like they used to.

Soredemo Ikite Yuku ep 8

I didn't want to write about Soredemo until the subbing was completed by I am compelled to to put my thoughts on this magnificent series onto paper after watching episode 8. I had just come back from work with my take away dinner and decided to watch ep 8 out of my gigantic backlog of doramas/movies/anime and then suddenly I was just transfixed onto the screen.

More than transfixed, I was pulled in. As if I were a fly on a wall peering into the lives of the unfortunate families. I could feel the air thick with so much tension and emotion that I had to step out for a cigarette mid way through the episode.

There's no point writing about the story because episode 8 puts you right in the confrontations and the mental anguishes that the characters experience. Futaba's father in a daze thinking not again. Why did I survive 15 years only for the same shit to happen again? You really felt for the poor father who had stayed strong all this while for the family, daring to have a faint glimmer of hope that one day they would be able to live a peaceful life and put the events of the past behind them.

Aki's mom finally getting her confrontation with Futaba's brother and what a bloody (figuratively) explosion of emotion that was and not an ounce of overacting in sight. I loved it when she said "You can kill me but I won't die cause I'll only die after you are dead!" The best way to describe Soredemo Ikite Yuku is that it makes you feel. Minimal music, raw emotion on display and I almost feel like I'm seeing something that I should not.

The fact that Soredemo can't even reach 10% ratings is a crime against art. So bloody tempted to finish the series without subs. Not to know how it ends but because the characters' emotions linger on. Do not miss this.

Ai Kotoba wa Yuki eps 4-11

Ai Kotoba wa Yuki is basically an underdog dorama. Poor ignorant villagers versus evil big corporation and the villagers have placed their hope on a struggling actor pretending to be a lawyer. My big reservation about Ai Kotoba was how long they were going to play the don't let the villagers discover that the lawyer is a fake. There is only so many times he can recover from a slip of the tongue and then act like a lawyer on tv before it gets repetitive, far-fetched and boring.

Probably the best thing in the show is the actor bringing in his writer friend who has good knowledge of the law because he has watched many hours of legal dramas for research. This was awesome because now our underdogs have a brain instead of the actor magically stumbling into safety each episode.

Putting the writer into the story also brings into it a stronger team element. The writer is the brains and the actor is the brawn who has to execute the plans. Shingo is the audience POV and of course Suzuki Kyoka is the hot love interest/de facto representative of the villagers for the audience.

For me, I didn't like that they took so long for the truth to be revealed to Suzuki Kyoka's character. She is a key character and its just wrong to keep her out of the loop for so long and protecting the false identity stopped being funny a few episodes ago. I really wanted the dorama to spend times showing how the underdogs can work together instead of wasting time having the actor make slips of the tongue in front of an oblivious Suzuki Kyoka.

The big climax is of course a trial and there are things that are head scratching though I have no knowledge of Japanese jurisprudence but a lot of things are meant to be feel good and funny rather than legally thrilling. (Can't they issue subpoenas in Japan?) I can't penalize Ai Kotoba for being absolutely warm and fuzzy but I just feel underwhelmed despite Yakusha Koji's awesome acting. His ability to play this actor who is sleazy one minute and then can turn into a hot shot lawyer is just fun to watch.

I think the main reason why its not a must watch in my book is that the script is not tight enough. 2 episodes less would have made it better. I just find it was stuck too long in a holding pattern in the middle of the series. And the final speech while heartfelt was not the attention grabber that the Yakusha Koji's first speech was. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed watching it, its just not as good as I hoped it could be.